


gotta give the boy points

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Song fic, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not about Bruce.</p>
<p>Warnings for on-screen death (original minor character), suicidal thoughts, brief, canon-typical violence</p>
            </blockquote>





	gotta give the boy points

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [gotta give the boy points](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/22464) by vonnegutz.tumblr.com. 



> For Julia.

**v. there are plenty of ways you can hurt a man**

“—n’ this,” the dealer snarls, weight pinning him to the wet asphalt, “will never see the fuckin’ lighta day, get me, you fuckwad, you are a _dead man_ , you hear me—”

He doesn’t feel it anymore, the gut-punch truth of those words, _dead man walking_ , but—

He almost regrets the sleek red expressionless curve of the mask, because he’d like to see this human-skinned monster realize just how fucked he is; but bloody impassivity of the mask hides his dead grin, and the dealer will never see him coming.

Jason Todd twists, flips them, frees his hands. “Funny thing about the light of day,” he says, thinking of masks and costumes and lies, lies, lies. He presses on the dealer’s windpipe, listens for the desperate, greedy rasp of air. “Nobody can see straight for the glare.”

He snaps the dealer’s neck, the twist a brutal crack lost to thunder and the roar of traffic at the alley’s end. Rocking back on his heels, he wipes his gloved hands, and stretches for the fire escape above the corpse.

Five stories up, and he remembers suddenly the precise contours of Bruce’s thin-lipped grimace, how he will stare at this corporeal evidence of his own failure for a full half-minute before shifting to examine the body, Jason’s fingers bruised into the dealer’s throat like prints into police files; how only five of those precious seconds will be spent wholly in self-loathing.

On the rung, his foot slips; his fingers tighten viselike on the edge of the landing, and as lightning splits the sky above him he wants to let go.

He pulls himself up, hates and loves the adrenaline spiking his veins, the perversity of his survival.

Nothing like a sprint through a thunderstorm to take the edge off.

 

**iii. maybe i should call for help; maybe i should kill myself**

Sometimes it’s worse.

Sometimes—maybe a second, maybe a day, maybe an entire fucking week—sometimes it’s like it was before the Pit.

He doesn’t remember it, not the way he remembers everything else, the Bat chasing after him in Crime Alley only to abandon him to its matron, then reclaim him and scrutinize him and judge him stonily and, finally, abandon him for good.

All he has from the days between his death and his resurrection is a blank fear-tinged haze, smothering and overwhelming, and only when it’s over do his eyes blur and his breaths come dangerously fast, and he thanks fuck or god or whatever puppeteer’s pulling the strings that he’s alone and no one is there to witness this latest humiliation and fuck, it’s not that he thinks crying signals weakness so much as it does brokenness and he is so, so fucking sick of being broken like this.

Sometimes, he looks around at the armory masquerading as an apartment, and thinks how easy it would be not to feel broken or blank or unwanted ever again.

Sometimes, he’s not sure which one scares him worst.

 

**ii. paint it red to fit right in**

Talia watches from the shadows, because she always does, even when she’s on the other side of the planet.

“…Interesting,” she says, hazel eyes unblinking on the screen. “Are you familiar with…?”

Jason shrugs. Another person, he would smirk, _nah, I just like the color_ , and it would be true, too, but it’s not what she’s asking, and he hasn’t lied to her.

(Yet.)

“Yeah,” he says, because of fucking course he’d done his readings in the cave, studied the Joker, and Dent, the Scarecrow, the Penguin, the whole mad host of Gotham’s rogues—not that it had saved him.

“It’s part of the plan,” he says into the silence, Talia watching him shrewdly. “He failed then, too,” the warehouse, the set-up, the chemicals that birthed a madman, one failure spawning another.

It’s not just that, of course. The helmet’s practical—he’s rediscovered his love for motorcycles, the way they roar for him and won’t carry unnecessary baggage. The sweatshirt he’s been lugging around the world is threadbare and doesn’t exactly do a lot to hide his face. And he does love the color, a bright bloody star against the night, a bold declaration of war and and wrath and vengeance, a challenge to Bruce’s careful camouflaging grey-and-black ensemble.

“Hm.” Talia smiles suddenly, cruel and beautiful as a blade, and for a second he loves her a little, her fury and passion and lethal practicality.

“Remember,” she says, and the second’s over.

“Punish him,” Jason says, a promise to them both, and to Babs and the Commissioner and the thousands buried unavenged in Gotham’s cemeteries. She looks at him knowingly; the screen goes dark, and he thinks it’s the last time they’ll speak as allies.

The mask stares up at him, expressionless as a skull, and he brushes a gloved thumb across its gleaming surface.

Who cares if the Joker had the mantle first, if he’s just the latest in an innumerable line of shady fucks to claim the title as their own. He’s going to make sure that no one will _ever_ be able to replace him, that no one will ever even dare to make the attempt.

“Welcome to the new age, baby,” Jason tells the mask.

Red Hood will be his, the way Robin never was.

 

**iv. these words fall out like tears from a gun**

It’s not about Bruce.  


Except—no, that’s not quite right. It’s about years of work, of trying to prove that he could be good, that he could be as good—no, fuck that, that he could be _better,_ that he could be the perfect Robin, the perfect counterpart to the Batman. It’s about loyalty and dedication and honor, and it’s about vengeance and it’s about _justice _. It’s about love, at heart, or rather, the aching bitter dearth of it.  
__

“Oh, birdbrain, lighten up a bit,” the Joker tells him, smile stretched obscenely wide across his face. He shifts, testing the hold of the zip ties, and Jason watches from behind the mask.  


(He can’t quite shake the feeling that if he takes his eyes off the Joker, even for a second, he’ll be back beneath the brutal blunt crowbar, unable to scream for his collapsed lung, unable to move for countless agonizing fractures, unable to escape for a locked door and the fatal blast radius of a mountain of explosives.)  


Jason checks the ties briefly—everything as it should be—and turns away, deliberate, casual. He’s pretty sure that the Joker thinks he’s afraid, wonders briefly if that inaccuracy is a strength or weakness.  


He’s not afraid. What’s there to be afraid of? This will end in his death, and the Joker’s, and Bruce’s too. Maybe.  


“You were always my favorite, anyhow,” the Joker says, “and I gotta say, lamb chop, the way you turned out—” He smacks his lips loudly, and his eyes are bright and cunning and horribly, horribly sane. “Makes me _proud,_ it does—”  


“I am _nothing_ like you,” Jason spits, the steel-enforced toe of his boot connecting viciously with the Joker’s ribcage, and the Joker just laughs and laughs and laughs, and even when there’s blood on his teeth and tears in his eyes he won’t stop laughing, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t _get to feel that way,_ not even if he’s the only one who does.  


Who the fuck was he kidding—  


It’s not about Bruce, except that it always is.

 

**vi. the best of us can find happiness in misery**

Silence. Then—  


Then his replacement shows up, swinging in from an adjacent building and this, this is too fucking funny to protect the fragile edges of a—a truce that had begun between them, because for all his words and all his promises, Bruce still needs to shove just how _unnecessary_ Jason has become into his face.  


Jason twitches, makes a sound in the back of his throat that could pass as a disbelieving scoff but is probably closer to an aborted sob, and here’s the punchline.  


“You’re _lying_ ,” Bruce says incredulously, and fuck, Jason wishes the cowl were trampled on the rooftop just so he could see Bruce’s face, some evidence that Bruce cares if he’s lying, that he’s hurt, that Bruce regrets his part in inflicting it.  


(He doesn’t look at the replacement, he doesn’t, he doesn’t, jesus.)  


“So what if I am?” he shouts from across the alley, fingers wrapped tightly around the edges of his grapple gun. From the corner of his eye, he picks out his exit strategy, focused on not focusing on the stark shadowed figures on the other side. “Learned from the best, Bruce!”  


He aims, he shoots, he soars across Gotham’s traffic-ridden streets, leaving them both behind for the burn of frigid air, the dizzying hundreds of feet between him and the crowded crying city pavement.  


He doesn’t look back. He’s not a masochist, whatever else may be said about him.  


(Why don’t they chase him. Why does he always run.)

 

**vii. i fear i’ll find the evident so horrible**

Dick settles beside him, perched precariously on a rooftop ledge, knees drawn up to chest like a child’s.  


Jason says nothing, waits it out. It’s just past four in the morning, and everything hurts and all he wants to do is sleep, but his closest safehouse is still twenty blocks away, and Dick’s been trailing him half the night.  


Something’s gotta be worth the effort.  


Dick is not forthcoming.  


Eventually, Jason shifts. “We gonna watch the sunrise, Dickiebird?”  


Dick hesitates, and Jason realizes—he _would,_ too, if Dick thought it would help, or even if he didn’t, because Dick actually likes shit like the sun coming up. He likes being normal, or pretending to be, who knows why.  


But he’s probably got work, and no sleep, and in any case it’s past time to cut to the chase.  


Dick turns, sighs, pulls his mask off. Jason keeps his on.  


“He misses you,” he says, and Jason snorts. “No, Jay—listen. Please.”  


He’s probably going to have to blow up his safehouse. Well—maybe not.  


“I’m only listening,” Jason says grudgingly, “because I’m too fucking tired to move.”  


Dick sighs again. Jason wonders when he became such a disappointment.  


(Before the Pit, surely.)  


“Call home, Little Wing,” Dick says intently. “He—Jay, he’s always loved you.”  


Lies, lies. Why can’t they at least find a new one to roll out.  


“The number hasn’t changed.” Dick stands, irritatingly graceful against the predawn sky. “He’s not the only one, Jason.”  


It’s getting hard to breathe. He waits until Dick’s gone, vanished over the horizon to Blüdhaven, before releasing the mask and pulling it off roughly. The air is cold and clear against his face, clammy from the mask, and he inhales deeply and sharply for a few minutes.  


Times like these, he’s grateful for the domino mask beneath the hood.  


Back in the safehouse—too late (early) and too tired to torch the place now—he pulls out one of the burner phones he keeps. He thinks about calling home, and stares at it until he falls into a fitful sleep.  


(It hurts less to think that Bruce didn’t love him, didn’t mourn him, than it does to know the truth: that Bruce loved him, and still did nothing.)

 

**viii. sometimes the best intentions are in need of redemption**

The replacement is persistent, Jason allows, and as far as he can tell, good at the job too—not that that makes him feel any better.  


In fact, he thinks, staring at the smoking ruins of his third safehouse in as many months, it’s really fucking annoying.  


Something _scuffs_ on the pavement behind him, and his thumb brushes the handle of his—well, not his favorite gun, because he’d forgotten that in the rush to get rid of the first safehouse, but a gun nonetheless, sleek and brutal and perfectly fitted to the contours of his palm.  


(If the replacement had found him, Bruce couldn’t be far behind—surely he’d learned at least _that_ from Jason’s death.)  


“You really don’t have to keep destroying property like that,” the replacement says reproachfully.  


Jason exhales, turns, and glowers, though he doubts it has much effect through the mask.  


The replacement folds his arms across his chest. The yellow _R_ is bright, untarnished, against the the red of his tunic, and Jason aches for one clear moment, for when that symbol was his, for when—  


“What d’you want,” Jason says wearily. “There a family reunion in the works?”  


“There can be.” He pauses, tilts his head slightly, a dark lock of hair falling over his forehead. “But not tonight.”  


“Then _what_ ,” Jason demands, what could be worth this much effort.  


“There’s a hotdog stand,” Robin says, the words slightly rushed, nervous. “Couple buildings down, best in the city.”  


“Bullshit,” Jason says before he thinks better of it. “Best hotdog stand’s three miles north, _everyone_ knows that.”  


“I’ll prove it to you,” Robin says.  


“You’re going to eat your words,” Jason says. “Wait, no. What? _Why?”_  


Robin shrugs. “Robins should stick together,” he says. “And Dick says you’re not eating enough.”  


“How the fuck does _Dick_ —” This is the part where he would be hitting his head against a wall, if he weren’t on a rooftop and if he weren’t wearing the mask, because of fucking _course_ Dick’d noticed.  


“Also,” says Robin, pressing his advantage, “there’s going to be a heist at the art museum at midnight. I could use some backup.”  


“Backup, I’m not your fucking backup, where’s—” Jason stops short, not quite able to say the name, unsure which name to use.  


“Metropolis,” Robin says, not missing a beat, and Jason’s stupidly grateful for that—  


Wait. What the fuck.  


Fine, so what if he hasn’t been eating properly lately, flitting from hidey-hole to safehouse with barely a rest between, so what if trying to control the criminal underworld of Gotham is proving to be more exhausting than he’d anticipated, so _what_ if this, if Bruce—  


You don’t send a Robin out alone. Just. You _don’t._  


He points at Robin. “Okay, first things first. We’re going to the _actual_ best hotdog stand in the city, and don’t argue ’cause it’s closer to the museum _and_ it’s fucking delicious.”  


“Fine,” Robin says. “We’ll go to the real best stand next time.”  


_“Next time—?!_ Two. You are _my_ backup, got it?”  


Robin tilts his head, expression saying, clear as a sniper’s scope, _Sure. You keep telling yourself that._  


_“Three,”_ Jason says, “and this is non-negotiable. None of this goes back to B, okay?”  


There’s a pause, then—  


“Okay,” Robin says seriously. “Just us, then,” which is the entire problem, really.  


“This isn’t—we’re not _friends_ ,” Jason says, testing or reassuring—he’s not sure which.  


Robin shrugs. “We don’t need to be friends,” he says, “so long as we’re not enemies.”  


“Fine,” Jason snipes, “good,” because he’s a learned liar who is too brutally honest with himself.  


So what if the kid doesn’t want to be his friend. They’ll go eat the best hotdogs in the city, they’ll go save the art museum from another fucking heist, and Jason won’t think about the first time he snuck inside; and by the time he ditches his replacement and any trackers Bruce wanted delivered, it’ll be dawn, and the sky will soften over Gotham like forgiveness, and maybe the loneliness will finally ache into action. Maybe he’ll finally call home, smother the ashes of his pride and his hurt, and say _I miss you. I loved you. Let me stay. Let me help._  


_Tell me you missed me too._  


_Tell me you’ll help me._  


_Tell me we can forgive each other._  


“Ready?” Robin asks.  


_Don’t tell me you loved me. It hurts too much._  


Jason squints at the sky, the distant gleam of glass and light.  


“Ready,” he says, a terrible lie.

 

**i. children, don’t grow up**

He is thirteen, and he has never been loved.  


Jason plucks at his costume, his uniform, red tunic and green boots, a bright beautiful _R_ above his heart.  


This—this isn’t love. He’s not stupid enough to make that mistake, though, god, how he wants to.  


It’s trust. Bruce _trusts_ him, as a soldier. A partner. Maybe, someday, if he’s good enough—maybe a son.  


He can hope and he can dream, but he is thirteen years old, and he has never been loved, and no one has ever cared enough to trust him.  


He slips outside behind the computer console, and startles Alfred, and Bruce _smiles_ and Jason feels as though his heart will burst from happiness.  


This is the best day of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics lifted, in order, from "Another One Bites the Dust," Queen; "Sail," AWOLNATION; "Radioactive," Imagine Dragons; "Tears from a Gun," The Black Ghosts; "I Don't Care," Fall Out Boy; "Falling Down," Atreyu; "Wake Up," Arcade Fire.


End file.
